The Death of Lysanda

Naphtali Noi, proof-reader and dreamer, sits alone on his rooftop. From time to time he stuffs animals; more often he conjures up the image of Lysanda, his ideal woman. But the world breaks through the carapace he has so carefully constructed to shield his loneliness in the form of persecutions by his fellow tenants, and then by the arrival of the Earth Mother, Batia, who tries to engulf him.


 
A bright jewel-like proverb, a calm and collected account of fear and loneliness and passion. The prose is formal and dignified, the color refined to a minimum, but it is full of implications and enormous tautness; an ideal shape and form for this compact, lyrical essay on the nature of reality.
Sunday Times

Orpaz maneuvers with vigor between the fantastic and the humor of ordinary daily life. The conventional lie that salvation awaits us at the end of our anguish is what gives Orpaz's book its tragic truth and universal dimension.
Le Figaro